Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Cook's Guide entry for Salt along with all the recipes employing Salt presented on this site, with 10859 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Salt recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Salt as a major wild food ingredient.

Salt is so ubiquitous today that it's hard to remember just how important an ingredient this is in all cooking. Salt is an oddity as it's just about the only mineral commonly eaten by humans. It is composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl) and is commonly derived either from the mineral rock salt or from evaporating sea water to produce sea salt (in which case, there will also be potassium chloride [KCl] present). Salt is also one of the five basic taste sensations (along with sweet, bitter, sour and umami).

Salt has been a valuable commodity since ancient times as it can be used to preserve foods, especially meats. As a result it effectively eliminated the dependency on the seasonal availability of food and enabled travel allowed travel over long distances. But because salt was hard to obtain it became a highly-valued trade item. In ancient Rome salt was even used as a currency. Indeed, the Latin word salarium (a payment made in salt) is the root of the modern word 'salary'.

Table salt, the most commonly used salt, is mainly refined salt (about 95% by weight). It also contains substances that make it free flowing (anticaking agents) such as sodium silicoaluminate as well as a minute amount of invert sugar to prevent the salt from turning a yellow colour when exposed to sunlight, and to prevent a significant loss of iodine via vaporization. In the UK at least table salt is iodised by mixing with trace amounts of sodium iodide, iodate, or sometimes potassium iodide which is used to help reduce the chance of iodine deficiency in humans.

Though basically made from the evaporation of sea water, sea salt is also refined as completely raw sea salt is bitter due to magnesium and calcium compounds, and thus is rarely eaten. Purification usually involves recrystallization. In recrystallization, a brine solution is treated with chemicals that precipitate most impurities (largely magnesium and calcium salts). Triple stages of evaporation are then used to collect pure sodium chloride crystals, which are kiln-dried. Anticaking agents (and potassium iodide, for iodised salt) are generally added at this point.

As salt is one of the basic human taste sensations the addition of salt can significantly enhance the flavours of food. Salt also helps counteract the bitterness of some foods, which is why some highly-bitter vegetables are salted prior to cooking.